Republican Holocaust Denier from IL (Thankfully) Loses U.S. House Race

America has lost its shit on multiple levels, but at least voters in one Illinois district did the right thing regarding Arthur Jones, a Republican candidate for U.S. House best known for denying the Holocaust.

His Democratic opponent, Dan Lipinski, crushed him tonight with 75% of the votes (with 74% of precincts reporting). That’s good news if you like Democrats. That’s less-good news if you like progressive Democrats since Lipinski is famously anti-abortion.

Still, Jones was a Republican so awful that even other Republicans, such as Tim Schneider of the Illinois Republican party, made statements distancing the GOP from a seat they were more than willing to concede once Jones won the primary.

How did he even become the nominee? The GOP felt this was not a winnable race, so they didn’t run an official candidate. Jones saw an opportunity, swept in under the Republican banner, and took the primary. The GOP didn’t endorse him, but that doesn’t mean Jones and his views weren’t associated with their party.

Jones was a member of the National Socialist White People’s Party for nearly a decade as well as a self-described leader of the American Nazi Party. He was racist, anti-Semitic, and a Holocaust denier. He said the Holocaust was an “international extortion racket” made up by Jews for… who knows what. He’s so deeply anti-semitic that he actually regretted his vote for Donald Trump because he “surrounded himself with hordes of Jews.”

He was supposed to lose. But that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the fact that he actually lost. It couldn’t have happened to a worse guy.

By the way, at least 40,000 people still voted for Jones. Do they support his views? No. A lot of people probably voted for Jones simply because he was the Republican in that race without knowing anything about him. But some of them surely were aware of his views and just didn’t care.